Contact: Sheryl Hayes
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
PH: 434-924-6562
Email: sheryl@virginia.edu
April 5, 2010
For Immediate Release
VFH Receives Andrew W. Mellon Grant for Founding Era Project
Charlottesville, VA The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (VFH) has received a two-year $660,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to continue the work begun by Documents Compass on People of the Founding Era. This pathbreaking project will be a new kind of electronic biographical dictionary that highlights the lives of a broad population of early Americans―not only members of the elite but also slaves, artisans, and Native Americans.
“This generous grant from the Mellon Foundation provides vital support for the development of digital research and publication in the humanities,” said Robert Vaughan, VFH president. “Through the efforts of Documents Compass, scholars will be able to publish historic texts and modern research in a format that will be accessible and searchable by new generations of scholars worldwide.”
Documents Compass is a program of the VFH that aids scholar/editors, publishers, and others interested in developing digital projects. Created to help plan and develop documentary editions of historic texts, the service helps to locate, develop, and employ tools best suited to each project’s needs, and facilitates transcribing, proof reading, tagging, and copy editing.
People of the Founding Era will be published by Rotunda, the digital imprint of the University of Virginia Press, as a resource for scholars of the founding of the American republic. Rotunda publishes original digital scholarship and newly digitized critical and documentary editions in the humanities and social sciences, combining the originality, intellectual rigor, and scholarly value of traditional peer-reviewed university press publishing with thoughtful technological innovation designed for scholars and students.
This grant will be used to extend work begun under a previous grant from the Mellon Foundation, based in New York, N.Y., that allowed VFH/Documents Compass to explore the feasibility of creating a data resource for scholars of the American founding.
The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, based in Charlottesville, Va, is dedicated to promoting the humanities, and to using the humanities to address issues of broad public concern. In all of its programs, the Foundation works to make scholarship accessible; to promote understanding and discussion of enduring and contemporary issues; and to broaden the range of educational opportunities available to all Virginians.
-End-
“Virginia Foundation for the Humanities -- Shaping our Common Story”